One Good Reason (Boston Love #3)(65)
Pull yourself together.
When I finally reach my door, I’m shaking from more than just the cold. My mind feels as numb as my frozen body. I’m reaching for the entry panel to punch in the security code, willing my blue fingers to cooperate, when something slams into me from behind.
Hard.
I’m not a big woman. Most people would call me petite, and they’d be right. It doesn’t take much force to lift me or send me flying. So I know it’s intentional when a palm lodges between my shoulder blades and shoves me up against the brick wall of my building like a bug against a windshield.
The impact forces all the air from my lungs. My scream comes out as a rasp, barely echoing in the snow-dampened air. Hauling in a breath, I try again but a giant hand clamps over my mouth and muffles my cries before any sound escapes.
“Shut up,” a deep, unfamiliar voice growls by my ear.
I feel my eyes moving frantically inside their sockets, whites flashing with fear as his body presses into my back. I’m flattened so tight I can barely draw a breath through my nose. His grip has constricted all air flow and I feel myself starting to get light-headed, the longer I go without a proper breath.
I struggle against his hold, but it’s no use. My thrashing limbs are no match for the strength in his. He’s too strong.
My struggles cease completely when I feel the razor-sharp edge of a knife press into the hollow point at my throat. The blade cuts into the thin skin at my jugular, precariously close to my carotid. The slightest slip and I’ll bleed out into the snow.
Just like my parents.
The pressure increases fractionally, slicing into my flesh, and I feel a stream of warmth against my chilled skin as a rivulet of blood starts to drip down my neck, into the collar of my jacket.
If I could speak, I’d tell him to take anything. Everything.
Money.
Phone.
Purse.
Laptop.
Anything.
But there’s no way to tell him that with his hand over my mouth. There’s no way to form words or even coherent thoughts as panic overrides my system, blending reality with memory. Flashes of another night are seeping into my consciousness — fragments of another time, almost twenty years to the day, when blood ran red into the snow.
I can’t block them out. Can’t separate then from now.
The man shifts closer, knife tightening against my skin.
I’m five again, clutching my bouquet as though the petals can protect me from the stranger in the dark.
Blood drips faster. My lungs are scream for breath.
Or is that a woman screaming?
The man at my back shifts closer. “Don’t fight me.”
“Run, Zoe!” My mother’s hands, pushing me to safety. “Run, honey, run!”
His mouth scrapes my earlobe. His breath is hot against my frigid skin. “Listen. You listening, bitch?”
“Run, baby!”
His knife shifts.
Or is it a gun? A black, blunt weapon, firing in the dark. One, two, three, four, five, six shots. First Dad, then Mom as I duck between two parked cars.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” The growling voice is back. “But I will.”
People rush outside, drawn by the sounds of gunfire. The man stops chasing me before they spot him. Vanishes into the dark.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop digging.”
A stranger in a uniform pulls me from between the cars. Picks me up, puts a hand over my eyes.
“You’re messing with the wrong people. Powerful people.”
He tries to block my view, so I don’t see them there, butchered in the snow. But between cracks in fingers, over shoulders, under flashing ambulance lights… I see the blood and I know. They’re gone.
“You want to make it through this Christmas, don’t go back to the f*cking factory. Don’t send any more of your boyfriends there. You hear me, bitch?” The knife presses in again. “Nod so I know you hear me.”
Mommy. Daddy. Gone.
“I said nod if you hear me, bitch!”
I try to nod, but the world is going black around the edges. I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can’t see.
They’re gone.
“Good.” The knife pressure lessens slightly. “You tell your damn boyfriend to stay away. Stay out of it. Make sure he knows, he tries anything, you’ll pay the f*cking price.”
Gone.
Then, before I can turn to get a look at him, the weight at my back vanishes and he disappears. I fall to the ground, gasping for air, my eyes pressed tight closed as I curl into a ball in the snow.
Weeping.
Bleeding.
Remembering.
A voice in my head is telling me to get up, to call for help, to go inside so I don’t die here from frostbite and exposure… but it’s faint. And it’s getting farther away by the second, replaced by much darker thoughts that whisper maybe I should’ve died with them, all those years ago.
They’re gone.
Maybe you should be, too.
I curl in on myself a little tighter.
Feel the shadows close in a little darker.
And for the first time since I was five years old… I stop fighting.
* * *
“No, no, no, no, no. Zoe! Goddammit, Zoe, open your eyes!” Arms are sliding around me. Lifting me from the snow. Cradling me tight against a chest. “Honey, look at me! Are you still with me? Fuck!”